Month: October 2007

In response to a recent post by Hannes Magnusson titled “8 reasons why you should *not* write for the php.net manual“, I offer about 8 reasons why you should. Although at times subtle, Hannes shares good points regarding some of the frustration that comes with working on a successful (and old) Open Source project like PHP. How do we appropriately credit the kind souls who seemingly work anonymously within the php.net CVS repository? Not sure, but here are about 8 reasons why you should write for the official PHP manual:

You’ll make your mother and friends proud

You’ll own a cool @php.net email address

You’ll get to see and use your own work online for later use, and allow others to help improve upon it

You’ll be happy to know that millions of developers benefit from your work daily

You’ll gain experience using DocBook and the related tools to create documentation

You’ll be able to say “I write documentation for PHP, the most popular web scripting language on the planet“

You’ll end up learning PHP, especially the quirks and changes that it goes through. 5.3.0 has what again?

You’ll add the experience to your resume

You’ll have an excuse to tell people… “It sounds fun but I promised to document SPL tonight so can’t go“

You’ll help make something better, something you use. It’s good to use things that get better, right?

And lastly, it’ll give you something else to blog about

There are plenty more reasons but eightish is a good number. It’s worth noting that Hannes does an incredible amount of work for PHP as a webmaster, documentation geek, and php-src guy. See also the Documentation HOWTO for how to contribute.